Fresh Hopes for End to Chicago Teacher Strike by Weekend

The Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke with reporters outside the hotel where Chicago school officials met with union representatives.Credit
Nathan Weber for The New York Times

CHICAGO — Meeting behind closed doors into the evening, leaders on both sides of this city’s teacher strike voiced optimism on Thursday that a deal could soon be reached, bringing an end to a walkout that has halted classes for 350,000 students in the nation’s third-largest school system.

The upbeat tone marked a major shift from contentious days past, when Chicago Public Schools officials had deemed talks close to resolution while union officials declared the sides “miles apart.” As recently as Wednesday evening, the sides had sparred publicly over whether formal talks were really taking place at all.

Any deal would require a vote by the union’s roughly 700-member House of Delegates, which could come as early as Friday afternoon, possibly permitting hundreds of schools across the city to reopen on Monday, one week after the city’s first strike in a quarter-century began.

Still, even as talks were seen as progressing over compromises on how a teacher evaluation plan might be put in place and on health care premiums for teachers with families, thousands of teachers and supporters — many dressed in red rain ponchos — marched and chanted through main thoroughfares downtown, stopping at one point at a Hyatt hotel in protest of Penny Pritzker, a member of the Chicago Board of Education whose family founded the hotel chain.

Given four days of picketing outside largely empty schools, months of negotiations and a roller coaster of sharp and sometimes shifting talk from those involved in the negotiations, few here seemed quick to predict what will really come next.

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Chicago teachers demonstrated while negotiations continued.Credit
Nathan Weber for The New York Times

It was unclear precisely what had turned the mood of talks inside a Michigan Avenue hotel from sour on Wednesday afternoon to hopeful by Thursday morning, but school officials said they presented a new offer that included several changes in areas the union had been concerned about.

Among the proposed changes, according to school officials: teachers’ raises would average 16 percent over four years at a cost of $320 million, as had already been offered, but would be distributed differently; health insurance rates would not rise for teachers with families, as had been planned, if the union agreed to take part in a wellness program; and an appeals process would be created for teacher evaluations, which have been a significant area of disagreement.

Since last November, this city’s 26,000 public school teachers have been negotiating over the terms of the four-year contract, but the battle has played out more broadly, over the direction and philosophy of the school system, even as it struggled to solve gaping budget deficits.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has called for a longer school day, more control for principals in picking teachers, thorough evaluations for teachers, and expansion of the city’s charter schools. The teachers have said they felt under siege, and pitted against a larger national education trend that they say fails to consider Chicago’s realities, like the fact that 87 percent of public school students here come from low-income homes.

In many ways, teachers here have said they see their fight here as a larger one, taking place not only over education but also over the role of labor at a time when states like Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have fought battles with Republican leaders over collective bargaining rights and the power of unions. In fact, the Chicago Teachers Union announced on Thursday that it would hold a “Wisconsin-style” rally over the weekend, and that it expected wide attendance by supporters from other states.

“The teachers’ union here saw this as a local struggle within a larger national battle of what a lot of teachers call the privatization of schools,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois. “They didn’t see this as just localized. The issues that are being pushed here are being pushed in many urban and suburban school districts.”

Around the city, families said they were hopeful that the strike was nearly over. Many had expressed tolerance for the circumstances and the child care juggling act they found themselves in, in some cases, only a week into a new academic year, but patience seemed likely to run thin in the coming weeks. In 1987, the last time teachers here went on strike, an agreement took 19 days.

A relatively quick end to the fight here would also quiet an awkward issue for President Obama in his hometown in the heart of a presidential campaign season. Mr. Obama’s aides said he had not chosen a side in the strike, which pitted his former chief of staff, Mr. Emanuel, against a crucial bloc of his political support, the unions.

Steven Greenhouse contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on September 14, 2012, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Four Days Into Chicago Teachers’ Strike, Both Sides Adopt Upbeat Tone. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe